Katsu curry is one of the world’s most popular curries. A warming, flavoursome Japanese sauce, it’s usually served with breaded pork or chicken. Here, I’ve omitted meat in favour for a vegan version with sweet potato but sliced aubergine works well here too.

The key here is to get the sweet potato really crunchy and to cook the sauce for as long as possible to develop a rich flavour.

Serves 4. Prep time: 30 mins.

Ingredients

For the katsu sauce:
3 carrots (plus half a carrot extra for side salad)
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 knob of ginger
1 tbsp agave syrup (or honey)
4 tsp of curry powder
1 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tsp ground ginger (optional)
Rice vinegar
2 tbsp sweet soy sauce
1 vegetable stock cube

For the breaded sweet potato:
Panko breadcrumbs
3-4 sweet potatoes
175g plain flour
250ml plant based milk (or regular cow’s milk)
1 tsp salt
Sunflower/vegetable oil

For the garnish:
Lettuce
Lime juice
Spring onions
Sesame seeds

1. Preheat your oven to 180C. First up, let’s get the sauce on the go to allow for optimum cooking time. Finely chop your onion, carrot, ginger and garlic and then add to a pot till they get soft.

2. Prepare your vegetable stock cube in around 650-700ml of water, depending on how thick you’d like your katsu sauce. Whilst the veg is sweating in the pan, add your curry powder and garam masala. I like to add a teaspoon of dried ginger here too as it adds a nice deep kick to the sauce. Allow the spices to cook off with the veg before adding your stock to the pan and covering for 10 minutes on a medium heat.

3. Remove the lid from the pot, add a splash of rice vinegar, the sweet soy sauce and agave. Carry on cooking your sauce on a low heat whilst preparing the sweet potato.

4. Peel and cut your sweet potato into discs, you don’t want them too thick otherwise they’ll take a while to cook so around 1cm or smaller.

5. Place the flour, milk and salt into a bowl and whisk until it’s a smooth batter. Put a deep pan on to heat with some oil. In a separate bowl, pour out some panko breadcrumbs. Take each sweet potato disc and place into the batter until coated then toss in the panko. Once the oil is hot enough, start to put them in.

6. Once each batch is done, place on a tray and place in the oven so the potato can carry on cooking.

7. If serving with rice, put that on whilst you’re frying your discs off.

8. Once all the sweet potato is done, use a hand blender to blitz the sauce until smooth. Add more liquid to it if necessary and put back on to a low heat.

9. I like to serve this with some kind of fresh vegetable salad so finely shred some lettuce and shave some carrot (I just use a vegetable peeler) into a separate bowl. Add a generous squeeze of lime, some salt and a splash of rice vinegar.

10. Once everything is done, it’s time to plate up. I like to finish my plate off with some finely chopped spring onions and sesame seeds. Enjoy.

[Cover Image courtesy of Bryony’s Kitchen and is a representation of how this dish could look.]